By HAL LANCASTER
TAKE A HEALTHY dose of interviewing, add a dash of reference checking and a soupcon of resume review, season liberally with gut instinct and you get the perfect hire.
Unfortunately, this make-or-break managerial skill can often seem as dark and mysterious as alchemy. Don't relax your hiring standards, hiring gurus warn. You often must, line managers retort. Put candidates under pressure; no, put them at ease. Trust your gut feeling. Don't trust it, it's probably heartburn.
Hal Lancaster answers readers' questions on career issues in Career Corner. Send your questions or comments by e-mail to hlancast@wsj.com.
What's a manager to believe? Herewith, we sort out the key elements of the hiring process:
Define your needs.
Before you start interviewing, define the most important skills and knowledge
needed.
"Looking to hire somebody is like going to the supermarket," says Judith Shapiro, manager of human resources for Trompeter Electronics in Westlake Village, Calif. "You need to have a list and know what you need."
John Baumstark, senior vice president of world-wide field operations for Infinium Software, a provider of applications software, develops job profiles by studying people who have been successful in those positions. "Talk to customers," he urges. "Why do they like dealing with this person?"
Interview intelligently.
The experts agree on some techniques: Use tag-team interviewers to get
a more well-rounded picture, let the applicant do most of the talking and
elicit anecdotes about past behavior, not speculation on future actions.
"The best way to find out how someone will manage a project is to find out how they managed projects in the past," says Barry Shamis, president of Selecting Winners, a Mercer Island, Wash., consulting firm specializing in hiring practices.
BUT THEY DISAGREE on other tactics. Industrial psychologist Michael Mercer, who wrote "Hire the Best & Avoid the Rest," believes in lengthy, high-pressure interviews for high-pressure jobs. "If the job is challenging, the interview should be challenging," he says.
But Mr. Shamis insists there's no correlation between handling pressure in an interview and on the job. Moreover, you run the risk of scaring off candidates, warns Jim Kennedy of Management Team Consultants, San Rafael, Calif., which trains managers to interview and hire.
Both arguments have merit. But having seen both styles, I believe the less adversarial you are, the more good information you get. You can easily resolve the pressure issue with questions about past experiences and reference checks.
Gather your data, but don't ignore your gut.
Intuition plays a role in hiring decisions,
primarily in the nebulous realm of cultural fit.
"It all boils down to the manager saying, 'Would I like to be around this applicant 40 to 60 hours a week?' " asks Dr. Mercer. But what determines if a candidate fits your culture is his past behavior, not your instinct, Mr. Shamis insists.
To determine whether candidates fit into the frugal, team-based culture at Cisco Systems, Jim Massa, director of federal operations, asks questions about how they handled such things as entertainment expenses and team participation in past jobs.
"I want to hear things like, 'I treat expenses like it was my own money,' or 'When I did such and such, it didn't help me, but it sure helped so-and-so,' " he says.
But Mr. Massa doesn't dismiss gut feelings. He believes they are perceptions that haven't yet reached the conscious mind. "You should pay attention that something is being perceived," he says.
EVALUATE YOURSELF as well as the candidate.
Everybody knows a manager who hired inferior prospects when better ones were available, or surrounded herself with clones. Ms. Shapiro ruefully recalls the time she pushed for the hire of a secretary because she had a background similar to hers, which made her feel comfortable.
"Had I dug deeper, I would have known that she was a very problematic employee," she says.
"It's human nature," says Mr. Massa. To overcome it, he looks for people who can scale up to his job. "What is this person going to take off my desk so I can go do something else that will benefit the organization?" he asks himself.
Mr. Kennedy warns managers to measure candidates against the inventory of skills the managers themselves compiled, not against each other.
"You get tired of the process and say, 'Let's hire him, he's the best of the lot,' " which leads to mediocre hires, he explains.
But few job seekers can fulfill all of a manager's fantasies, so decide which skills are critical and which can be overlooked or taught. Stop looking for "pedigreed resumes," says Mike Daley, president of AccountPros, a Boston executive-search firm. He says you can unearth "diamonds in the rough" at state colleges and smaller firms who just need an opportunity and some mentoring.
Don't stop recruiting.
To ensure an adequate talent pool when you have an opening, stay active
in your professional community, Mr. Daley recommends. Dr. Mercer suggests
looking within for references.
"Ask your high achievers," he says. "Top performers tend to hang around with top performers; losers hang around with underachievers."